


Transpose

by Faint_Harlot



Series: SasuSaku Month [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Drabbles, F/M, SasuSaku Month, Series, prompts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-03
Updated: 2013-07-03
Packaged: 2017-12-17 14:59:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/868854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Faint_Harlot/pseuds/Faint_Harlot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's SasuSaku month!<br/>Prompt #1:  Hand-holding<br/>[I thought perfect meant you’re here for me – perfect meant you wouldn’t leave.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Transpose

**Author's Note:**

> Part of the SasuSaku Month series.

He calms, listening to the thrum of battle surrounding him. 

Footsteps sound from a distance away, and he tenses. Relaxes when he realizes they belong to his still fearsome, but less deadly, teammate.

“There you are,” she exhales, harshly, like a breath stolen. “Don’t run away again.” Her voice is light, but the quiet threat is there, and no less laced with hurt. A bird with a bent wing, delicate and gun-shy. 

She takes his hand.

For a second, he has everything to say. It is not the time nor the place, but foreboding wraps him in a deadly embrace. It takes him another ten, agonizingly long seconds before he hears the odd hitch in her breath. The strained, thin rattle. 

He squeezes back, expecting – he doesn’t know what. A clammy palm, betraying her fear; skin on fire, humming, ready for the dance of war and death. Anything but the squelching sound that halts his heartbeat, and warm liquid running between linked fingers and clasped palms. 

A second, a beat: She sags against him, raising a shaking hand to grasp . . . nothing; it never makes it, instead falling to her side limply. Carefully lying her on the dirt, he sees the culprit, a gaping wound in the fragile place where shoulder meets arm meets collarbone. 

Inhaling sharply, she tries to speak; it comes out in a thin, high cough. 

His voice is almost unsure; he’s never had this happen before. Wavering, he yells, “Medic!” It reverberates like a childish question. Angry now, he yells again: “MEDIC, anybody, MEDIC NOW!”

The field stops. Nobody breathes. The women –the only ones who can help now—heed the call, but it seems as if they run far too slow. 

Her emerald eyes are dull, shards of sea glass worn down, unpolished. As they fall closed, she whispers, “Hmm. She was right.”

“What are you talking about?” he demands.

The hand that earlier had failed now rises to the occasion, a lone, pale, and shaking thing, hovering in the air. 

“The woman told Ino and I that I … had a short line.”

“What?”

Sakura coughs again. Through his panic, he watches her fingers curl in pain. “A tragically . . . short . . . lifeline.”

“That’s a stupid joke,” he responds harshly. Ripping off his sleeve, his mind jumps to wrapping a tourniquet, but this wound won’t allow it. It’s stubborn and deadly, and threatens to claim her. “Stupid, you hear me?”

Body curls in response to trauma; sweat breaks out across her forehead and blood bubbles at the corners of her lips. Blinded by pain, her opposite hand glows and searches for the gushing wound; roughly taking her wrist, he guides it in vain, pressing harder, _this isn’t right, this isn’t fair, it’s supposed to be me,_ ignoring Ino and Hinata’s small hands tugging at his and their syllables that don’t make sense, his heartbeat throbs in his ears, _or is it hers,_ they’re wrong, _she can’t, she can’t, she can’t—_

She’s suffering, and it’s a mark of all the injustice he had wanted to eliminate from the world.

If someone had asked Uchiha Sasuke if he knew one thing for sure, it would have been that he would have been the first of his team to die. He was never ready for it to be any other way.

He does not let go of her hand; her fate will not be left to the blithe winds of prediction.

Because for once, he’s her lifeline.


End file.
